Rivky and her husband. Photo: provided.

“Is it me, or is it always either really hot or really cold here?” my husband asked as we walked through Montefiore Cemetery in Queens. There wasn’t a cloud in sight; it was, May but it felt like August. The sun was intense, a force to be reckoned with. It was a fitting day for the funeral of Rivky Deren-Berman.

As Rivky was born with Bloom Syndrome, pain and challenge were interwoven into her life for the entire 29 years that she was on the planet. She and her family were tested in ways that would have undone most people, but this never darkened their love of G-d or their love of the Rebbe.

I had known Rivky ever since she came from Stamford to Pittsburgh for high school at Yeshiva Schools. (Her great-grandparents started the school.) Even though I wasn’t related to her, she called me Tante Lieba (the Yiddish term for “aunt”). Her husband Shmulie, whom she married in 2012, won my heart immediately when he also used this word.

But she didn’t need me: Rivky was blessed with a huge and loving family. (And when I say huge, I mean huge, and when I say loving, I mean loving.) But because I was on the periphery, I could only project how poorly I would have dealt with her circumstances — her tiny stature attracted stares and she was in the hospital as much as she was out of it. Yet I knew she would be annoyed by my doing that because, by some mystical miracle, she didn’t feel sorry for herself or think less of herself, at least no more, and quite possibly less, than “normal” people do.

In spiritual terms, her life was golden: she deeply affected many, many people who will carry forward her life lessons. Surely G-d will compensate her well in heaven for her work here. But what about the rest of us? We who are that much weaker without Rivky in the world to remind us that anything is possible?

I watched Rivky as she ended her high school graduation speech with the line that defined her life: everything is okay in the end, and if it’s not okay, it’s not the end. 

Her words paraphrase G-d’s promise to us, His assurance that the Messianic era will be the glorious end to everything that pains and confounds us. The Rebbe has told the world that Moshiach is waiting to come, waiting to end the pain, waiting to make everything okay in the end.

But it’s up to each of us to demand it, not for Rivky, but for us. We need to tell G-d that this is not okay.

A glimpse into Rivky’s life offers epic inspiration and much to ponder, and can be found at her website.